Brazzil

Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms.

One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis.

On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking.

Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse.

Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.

The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj).

A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17.  Three policemen died and another two were injured.  This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.

In a room on the edge of a tropical forest in Rio de Janeiro, five friends lay down tracks on hacked software, coordinating their takes with the purring of fist-size cicadas and the occasional cry of a monkey. The sounds of this global city bleed through every beat on Rio hip hop crew A Filial's $1,99, out on Verge Records, an independent label dedicated to supporting both innovative global artists and music education projects in underserved communities.

I am the co-founder and Director of Rhythm of Hope, working in the Afro Brazilian cultural epicenter of Salvador, Bahia. Through Danielle Giron Valim there I met Antonio Luiz Alves de Souza, a remarkably creative and compassionate man who became and remained a personal friend of many years.

A number of events has projected Brazil into the headlines of international news, besides the traditional stories about violence, natural catastrophes or environmental issues. Behind this news-buzz is a deeper sense of the giant Latin American country as having in some elusive but unmistakable way "arrived" as a global player. 

Though journalists, international affairs professionals, travel lovers, and international businessmen are already well aware that Brazil is the country to watch, there are still many gringos who aren't tuned in to Brazil's ascent or don't quite understand the country's importance. This list is for those gringos.

The latest issue of Veja, Brazil's largest circulation weekly news, with a little over 1 million copies, gives us a taste of how politics is made south of the Equator. The conservative magazine often more inclined to preach sermons than reporting the news, tells about Lula's growing anti-media feelings and how the Brazilian president and his team are molding in the president's own image Lula's pick to succeed him, Dilma Rousseff.

The downpour of odd government decisions,  apparently meaningless presidential phrases and so much propaganda perhaps will lead people with common-sense to ask themselves: After all, where are we going? I use the adverb "perhaps" because some are in such a way intoxicated with "the biggest show on earth," of easy money that benefits a few, that I have my doubts.

Nine months after President Barack Obama took office, Washington still lacks two of its key Latin America policy-makers. Obama's nominations for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, and Ambassador to Brazil, Dr. Thomas Shannon, have been placed on "hold" by Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, over objections to the Obama administration's handling of the coup in Honduras.

The complaint one hears most commonly about Brazil from both Brazilians and outsiders regards the country's bureaucracy and burdensome laws and regulations. At first glance, the statutory burdens appear unnecessary at best, and wasteful at worst. But further review reveals the law's apparent intended purposes, and further scrutiny identifies their unintended consequences.

Recently, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) held a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss the importance of Income-Transfer Policies - initiated in 1995 in Brasília with the Bolsa-Escola and transformed into the Bolsa Família in 2004 - in the reduction of world poverty.

Everybody in Brazil knows that São Paulo state governor José Serra is desperate to become the next President. However, he is playing coy and showing no sense of urgency in gaining the official nomination of his PSDB party. By doing so, he is in danger of losing the big lead he currently enjoys over the likely PT candidate, Dilma Rousseff.

We continued our journey by night in the long helicopter ride from Manaus to Natal. 'Some purpose I have found,' I thought. 'Now I am running for my life, just trying to survive...' I looked over at Luiz and Emilio, who were sleeping, and reflected back to my arrival in Brazil, my first flight, as we bumped along:

Brazilians are always happy. I know this is a broad generalization, yet I'm not the first traveler to marvel at the carefree lifestyle in Brazil. Perhaps, like the inhabitants of some other Latin American countries, Brazilians are more easily satisfied than North Americans because they have lower expectations.

Along with the United States and Argentina, Brazil is now one of the strongest bastions of agribusiness on a global level. The world's tenth largest economy, Brazil is now the nation which suffers the greatest inequality, on a subcontinent which, in its turn, experiences the greatest wealth gap.